“And there are people in this country, who are Americans, and have the same view of totalitarianism that all the worst regimes in the world have had. They just are a minority — or have been a minority. And they have to be stealth to get anywhere, because who’s gonna vote for torture, who’s gonna vote for tyranny, who’s gonna vote for dictatorship? But we did. We did, and you see it slowly encroaching. And if they could move faster on this, they would.”

Says the man who carried water for the Bush administration. How does one manage to exist and be that impervious to irony?